“There are, as everybody knows, many falsehoods that are justifiable, some that it is actually a duty to tell.”  It may be so; I pray that I may never tell any of them (or any more of them).

Among justifiable lies I do not reckon that of Scott if ever he plumply denied that he wrote the Waverley novels.  I do not judge Sir Walter.  Heaven forbid!  But if, in Mr. Greenwood’s words, he, “we are told, thought it perfectly justifiable for a writer who wished to preserve his anonymity, to deny, when questioned, the authorship of a work, since the interrogator had no right to put such a question to him,” {267a} I disagree with Sir Walter.  Many other measures, in accordance with the conditions of each case, were open to him.  Some are formulated by his own Bucklaw, in The Bride of Lammermoor, as regards questions about what occurred on his bridal night.  Bucklaw would challenge the man, and cut the lady, who asked questions.  But Scott’s case, as cited, applies only to Bacon (or Mr. Greenwood’s Unknown), if he were asked whether or not he were the author of the plays.  No idiot, at that date, was likely to put the question!  But, if anyone did ask, Bacon must either evade, or deny, or tell the truth.

On the parallel of Scott, Bacon could thus deny, evade, or tell the truth.  But the parallel of Scott is not applicable to any other person except to the author who wishes to preserve his anonymity, and is questioned.  The parallel does not apply to Ben.  He had not written the Shakespearean plays.  Nobody was asking him if he had written them.  If he knew that the author was Bacon, and knew it under pledge of secrecy, and was asked (per impossibile) “Who wrote these plays?” he had only to say, “Look at the title-page.”  But no mortal was asking Ben the question.  But we are to suppose that, in the panegyric and in Discoveries, Ben chooses to assert, first, that Shakespeare was his Beloved, his Sweet Swan of Avon; and that he “loved him, on this side idolatry, as much as any.”  There is no evidence that he did love Shakespeare, except his own statement, when, according to the Baconians, he is really speaking of Bacon, and, according to Mr. Greenwood, of an unknown person, singularly like Bacon.  Consequently, unless we can prove that Ben really loved the actor, he is telling a disgustingly hypocritical and wholly needless falsehood, both before and after the death of Bacon.  To be silent about the authorship of a book, an authorship which is the secret of your friend and patron, is one thing and a blameless thing.  All the friends, some twenty, to whom Scott confided the secret of his authorship were silent.  But not one of them publicly averred that the author was their very dear friend, So-and-so, who was not Scott, and perhaps not their friend at all.  That was Ben’s line.  Thus the parallel with Scott drawn by Mr. Greenwood, twice, {268a} is no parallel.  It has no kind of analogy with Ben’s alleged falsehoods, so elaborate, so incomprehensible except by Baconians, and, if he did not love the actor Shakspere dearly, so detestably hypocritical, and open to instant detection.